The gluonic field of a heavy quark in conformal field theories at strong coupling

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics 2011-10, Vol.2011 (10), Article 41
• Main Authors: Chernicoff, Mariano, Güijosa, Alberto, Pedraza, Juan F.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acceleration; Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Coupling; Elementary Particles; Field theory; Flux density; High energy physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Quarks; Relativity Theory; String Theory
• ISSN: 1029-8479; 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP10(2011)041

We determine the gluonic field configuration sourced by a heavy quark undergoing arbitrary motion in super-Yang-Mills at strong coupling and large number of colors. More specifically, we compute the expectation value of the operator Tr[ F 2  +  … ] in the presence of such a quark, by means of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Our results for this observable show that signals propagate without temporal broadening, just as was found for the expectation value of the energy density in recent work by Hatta et al. We attempt to shed some additional light on the origin of this feature, and propose a different interpretation for its physical significance. As an application of our general results, we examine (Tr[ F 2  +  … ])when the quark undergoes oscillatory motion, uniform circular motion, and uniform acceleration. Via the AdS/CFT correspondence, all of our results are pertinent to any conformal field theory in 3 + 1 dimensions with a dual gravity formulation.